Porcelain brushes are used to apply porcelain to dental appliances, such as caps and bridges. Powdered porcelain material is first formed into a paste after being mixed with liquid, and the paste is then brushed onto the dental appliance. These brushes are rather expensive, costing from about ten to about sixty dollars apiece.
Unless the porcelain paste material is thoroughly cleaned from the bristles and shafts of such brushes after each use, the lifespan of the brushes will be only about one month. Such paste, after drying, becomes a dried agglomerate which impregnates the bristles and shaft of the brush and tends to render the brush useless for the application of porcelain paste material to dental appliances.
Elaborate and time-consuming protocols have been devised for the cleaning of the porcelain brushes. Thus, for example, one must generally manually wash the brush thoroughly, then shake out the brush to remove excess water and lost ceramic particles, and then manually reshape the head of the brush into its original shape. However, even this time consuming manual process is not entirely satisfactory. Frequently the porcelain particles will remain lodged in both the bristles and the shaft head.
It is an object of this invention to provide an apparatus which is adapted to clean a porcelain brush and effectively remove porcelain particles from the bristles and the shaft head of the brush.
It is another object of this invention to provide an apparatus which is adapted to reform the head of the brush while simultaneously removing excess water and porcelain particles.
It is another object of this invention to provide an apparatus for cleaning porcelain brushes in which a multiplicity of such brushes can be removably and readily mounted.
It is another object of this invention to provide an apparatus for cleaning porcelain brushes which is capable of maintaining such brushes in a stable vertical position during the cleaning operation.
It is another object of this invention to provide an process for cleaning a porcelain brush and effectively removing porcelain particles from the bristles and the shaft head of the brush.